Saturday, October 17, 2009

ObamaCare Means More Teen Sex, Less Abstinence

Liberal sex education "experts" expect Obama and a compliant Congress to stop the Bush-era federal promotion of wholesome living and marriage to students, in favor of sexualization and homosexual indoctrination

A coalition of liberal sex education advocates says the Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress will end support for abstinence-only programs that emphasize marriage and heterosexual relationships.

“The appropriations bills this year represent the most profound change in national sex education policy that we have ever had in the history of this country,” said William Smith, vice president for education and training with the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), at an event held Thursday on Capitol Hill.

Martha Kempner, vice president for information and communications with SIECUS, said the sex education programs used over the past eight years in America’s middle and high schools had a pro-marriage agenda.

“It’s six years of marriage promotion,” Kempner said. “You’re going on a journey and basically students are told that the only life goal that is acceptable is heterosexual marriage, and there’s one journey to follow to get there and it requires abstinence until you get there. . . They were still espousing marriage as the only appropriate adult relationship, including inaccurate information … promoting biases against sexual orientation, gender and family structure.”

Virginity pledges, Kempner added, not only don’t keep teens from having sex, but they also unfairly target homosexuals.

“Asking a gay or lesbian teen to sign this in high school is tantamount to asking them to agreeing to a lifetime without sexual behavior,” she said. “These programs are really made -- I would say they are made -- for a heterosexual classroom, but they are really made for a heterosexual world and obviously that’s inappropriate.”

Randall Moody, a lobbyist for the NEA, said the organization and its members support sex education that includes “sexual abstinence, birth control, family planning, diversity of sexual orientation, gender identification, parenting skills, STDs, HIV-AIDS, sexual harassment and abuse and problems associated with and resulting from teenage pregnancy.”

In late September, the Senate Finance Committee approved an amendment to its health care bill from Utah Republican Orrin Hatch that would reinstate $50 million in annual funding to abstinence-only programs. Earlier this year, President Obama removed funding for the programs from his budget.

. . . A spokeswoman for the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, which opposes abstinence-only education, said the Hatch amendment was not a surprise. But the spokeswoman, who declined to be identified by name, said she hopes and expects that the amendment will be cut from any final health reform bill before it leaves Congress . . .